Acrylic Paint

Sources: Liquitex surface customization, Liquitex surface preparation, DecoArt Americana Acrylics, DecoArt cardboard acrylic project, Tikkurila particleboard painting guidance, DecoArt Americana adhesion medium, Benjamin Moore composite-wood acrylic paint, Angelus rubber-paint guidance, PlaidFX EVA foam guidance, Crayola air-dry clay decorating guidance, PLEXIGLAS painting guidance, SABIC LEXAN sheet painting guidance, and Sculpey polymer clay FAQs.

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  David Hockney

  Tate records A Bigger Splash (1967) as acrylic on canvas; Hockney used white cotton-duck canvas to keep the pool, architecture, and splash sharply distinct. Its crisp surface and bright California light show how the fast-drying paint served his Los Angeles scenes.

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  Andy Warhol

  MoMA records acrylic with metallic enamel on canvas in Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962). The 32 panels repeat familiar grocery labels, while the combination of paints gives the hand-painted series a surface distinct from his screenprints and later oil paintings.

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  Helen Frankenthaler

  Frankenthaler’s Mauve District (1966) is acrylic on canvas. A broad mauve area dominates the large painting, while wedges of other colors and exposed fabric complicate its edges. The work shows her shift to acrylic after the soak-stain oils of her earlier career.

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  Jean-Michel Basquiat

  The Whitney records acrylic in Basquiat’s Hollywood Africans. Quick-drying color suited his layered words, symbols, and gestural marks, often applied over reused or uneven supports. The museum’s record documents acrylic as one part of his mixed-material approach.

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  Keith Haring

  The Whitney catalogs Haring’s Safe Sex (1985) as acrylic on canvas. Bold, flat passages and outlined figures carry his public visual language into a studio work; other projects used enamel, vinyl paint, and spray paint on different surfaces.

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  Ashley Longshore

  The Louisiana Art & Science Museum records Longshore’s Cleopatra (2019) as acrylic on custom wood panel. Her bright Pop-inspired portrait uses a rigid support, while other documented works place acrylic on canvas, showing the paint across distinct formats.

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  Sophie Tea

  Tea’s official catalog documents acrylic paintings on canvas and paper, including works that combine acrylic with oil pastel or pencil. Saturated color and layered line appear across larger canvases and smaller sheets; the drawing materials remain distinct from the paint.

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  Slawn

  Saatchi Yates documents acrylic in Slawn’s bold paintings, where opaque color and brush-applied passages meet graffiti-like marks. The medium appears across canvas and unconventional supports, carrying his raw caricatured figures and graphic visual language into gallery works.

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  Kiptoe

  Kiptoe uses acrylic in large mural compositions, applying broad color areas to prepared exterior walls. He develops scenes from sketches and painted blocks, adapting line and scale to each building; selected edges and details may use spray paint instead.

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  Sarah Kraning

  Kraning’s portfolio documents acrylic paintings made in response to music, translating sound into color, shape, and movement. At Montclair Art Museum, a live painting performance brought that process to canvas in real time, linking her material practice to music and audience interaction.

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  Billy Al Bengston

  LACMA identifies Liquitex alongside oil, enamel, and lacquer in Bengston’s Humphrey. The named artist-paint product documents acrylic within his mixed-media board practice, separate from the sprayed automotive finishes he adapted to metal and other hard surfaces.

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  Bridget Riley

  Yale’s Riley catalogue records acrylic emulsion in her work Current. Repeated color bands make the flat surface seem to pulse and shift as viewers look across it; the specific medium distinguishes this work from records that say only synthetic emulsion.

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  Joe Cornelius

  Cornelius uses acrylic paint in residential and commercial decorating, applying it to walls and trim for interior finishes. His project guidance connects color choice and surface preparation to the room and substrate, treating acrylic as a practical building coating rather than a fine-art medium.

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  Mary Corse

  Corse mixes glass microspheres into acrylic and varies brush direction so reflected light shifts with the viewer’s angle. MoMA documents this material approach in Untitled (First White Light Series), where the reflective surface changes through movement rather than through a separate paint formulation.

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  Molly Zuckerman-Hartung

  The Whitney records acrylic in The Madame of the Painting (2013), alongside latex, fabric and paper collage, and black ink on canvas. Acrylic is one paint in a layered work, while the sewn and attached materials remain distinct parts of its construction.

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  Peter Halley

  In Red Cell with Conduit (1982), Halley used acrylic and Day-Glo acrylic with Roll-a-Tex on canvas. The textured additive builds a raised surface, while acrylic carries the geometric cells and conduits, making the work a combination of paint and texture.

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  Sigrid Sandström

  The Frye Art Museum records acrylic on polycarbonate in Sandström’s Ginnungagap. The transparent synthetic sheet gives the painting a support unlike traditional canvas; another documented work uses acrylic on Masonite, showing the medium across distinct rigid surfaces.

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  Agnes Martin

  MoMA catalogs Untitled #1 (1981) as gesso, acrylic, and pencil on canvas. Martin thinned the acrylic into barely perceptible horizontal bands, while a pencil grid organizes the surface beneath them; the record distinguishes paint from ground and drawing.

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  Anselm Kiefer

  SFMOMA lists acrylic among the materials in Kiefer’s Sulamith (1983), a layered composition that also uses other media. Here acrylic forms one component of a dense mixed-material surface rather than a single-paint image on a conventional canvas.

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  Barnett Newman

  Newman used acrylic and oil together in Be II (1961–64), and the National Gallery of Art records Thirteenth Station (1965–66) as acrylic on canvas. These works document acrylic in both mixed-paint and single-medium compositions across canvases.

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  Mark Rothko

  The National Gallery of Art records Rothko’s Untitled (1969) as acrylic on paper. Softly edged fields of brown give the sheet a restrained composition; other late works from the same year use acrylic on canvas, distinguishing them from his earlier oils.

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  Frank Stella

  The Met records Stella’s Untitled (Kufa Gate Shape) (1967) as acrylic on shaped canvas. Curved bands of color follow the nonrectangular support, making the canvas shape part of the composition; later works combine acrylic with oil and industrial coatings.

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  Joan Miró

  The Fundació Joan Miró records Woman (21 April 1978) as acrylic on canvas; another painting made the same day combines acrylic with oil. These late works document acrylic within Miró’s changing practice, apart from the oil-based Surrealist paintings of earlier decades.

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  Amy Sillman

  MoMA records acrylic and oil together in Sillman’s Split 2. The two paints share one canvas, while her gouache works on paper use a different medium. This documented example shows acrylic as a specific part of her mixed-paint practice, without assigning every visible passage to one binder.

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  Audrey Flack

  The Smithsonian records acrylic on canvas in Flack’s Queen; MoMA identifies acrylic beneath oil in Leonardo’s Lady. These works document acrylic both as a named paint and as an underlayer in a mixed-media composition, distinct from her oil-only paintings.

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  Chéri Samba

  MoMA records acrylic on canvas in The Draughtsman, Chéri Samba (1981), and acrylic with sequins, photographs, and glue in Hope Keeps You Going #2 (1997). The records show the paint across different periods and mixed-media formats.

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  Christina Muscari

  Muscari uses acrylic furniture paint in refinishing projects, applying it as the main color coating on a desk and nightstands. Her tutorial demonstrates a smoother painted finish than her deliberately distressed chalk- and milk-paint examples, making acrylic a specific material choice in her furniture practice.

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  Chuck Close

  MoMA records acrylic and ink with graphite on gessoed canvas in Close’s Robert/104,072 (1973–74). Gridded, segmented marks assemble the portrait from a photographic source; acrylic is named alongside ink and graphite, which contribute separate drawn elements.

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  Craig Kauffman

  The Whitney records Kauffman’s Untitled (1973) as acrylic and ink on paper. Acrylic is the paint medium, while ink is a separate drawing material. The flat painted sheet documents a different approach from the shaped plastic reliefs in his broader practice.

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  Cy Twombly

  Twombly used acrylic in later canvases, sometimes with wax crayon and graphite. This differs from the oil-based house paint in other works. MoMA and the Cy Twombly Foundation document his range of paint and drawing materials, clarifying acrylic as one distinct medium in his practice.

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  David Alfaro Siqueiros

  LACMA records acrylic on board in Landscape in Red (1969) and acrylic with oil in The Vow (1963). These paintings document Siqueiros using acrylic both alone and with oil, distinct from his pyroxylin and enamel experiments.

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  Davide D’Elia

  D’Elia uses acrylic in assembled paintings and painted objects documented by gallery and exhibition records. The medium is distinct from the antifouling coating in FRESCO, where paint protects a surface over time; acrylic is one part of a broader material practice.

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  Derrick Adams

  In Floater 59, the Hudson River Museum identifies acrylic on paper with pencil and fabric collage. Other Floater works combine acrylic with cut fabric, showing how Adams uses paint as the ground for assembled scenes while keeping collage materials distinct.

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  Dia al-Azzawi

  The Met records acrylic in al-Azzawi’s Gilgamesh paintings, while his Samarqand project uses fabric-covered paperboard. These examples document the medium across conventional and constructed supports, distinct from his watercolor, gouache, metallic paint, and oil works.

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  Dionne Woods

  Woods’s Love Story is documented as acrylic on stretched canvas, a studio painting distinct from her furniture refinishing. The paint carries the finished image on a conventional textile support, while her clay-based projects treat existing furniture as the object being decorated.

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  Dona Nelson

  Carnegie Museum records Nelson’s Bells as acrylic with cheesecloth and tar gel. These materials create different textures without becoming additional paint binders. Nelson’s acrylic works often use porous textile layers, where painting and staining can continue across both sides.

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  Ed Moses

  LACMA records Abstract Painting (Red #1) as acrylic on gessoed canvas and Maintenance Man as acrylic on raw wood. Across these supports, Moses used grids and exposed ground as active parts of the composition, documenting acrylic with different surface preparations.

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  Ed Ruscha

  Ruscha used sprayed acrylic in his silhouette paintings, replacing the brush-and-oil approach of works such as Standard Station with smoother color fields. Museum records document acrylic in these works, where controlled contours and flat color preserve his interest in signs and commercial imagery.

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  Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson

  In Lay-lah Lay-lah, Bergelson used acrylic on parachute cloth for a public mural. The flexible fabric could be installed outdoors, unlike the fixed glass and masonry surfaces used in other projects; her records document paint and support as separate choices.

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  Emma Amos

  The Smithsonian records acrylic on linen in Amos’s Winning (1983), with handwoven fabric as a separate attached material. In Will You Forget Me?, acrylic combines with fabric collage, showing the paint both on its own and within her textile-based constructions.

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  Enzo H. Kim

  Angelus Direct documents Kim mixing acrylic leather paint with 2-Soft fabric medium for painted footwear. Thin brush or airbrush coats help keep the textile flexible, while the named acrylic binder remains distinct from the added fabric medium; this method is specific to fabric shoes.

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  Faith Ringgold

  The Guggenheim records acrylic paint on canvas in Woman on a Bridge #1 of 5: Tar Beach (1988), alongside printed fabric, ink, and thread. The textile and writing materials remain separate from the paint, which forms one layer in Ringgold’s story-quilt practice.

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  Jasper Johns

  MoMA records acrylic in Johns’s Untitled (2001), a series of related works on paper combining paint, collage, watercolor, gouache, aquatint, and etching. Acrylic is one part of a deliberately mixed technique, distinct from the wax-based surfaces of his 1950s paintings.

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  Jean Dubuffet

  MoMA records acrylic in Dubuffet’s Parachiffre XLIV (1975), part of his later graphic paintings. The collection record documents the paint directly, rather than leaving its type to be inferred from the dense color and textured surface.

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  Julian Stanczak

  The Cleveland Museum of Art records Filtered Yellow and Flow as acrylic on canvas. Stanczak’s repeated bands and color transitions make the flat surfaces seem to move; these direct medium records are more specific than catalog entries using only “synthetic polymer paint.”

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  Michael Bergt

  Bergt’s Balance of Power is cataloged as egg tempera and acrylic on panel. The two paints appear together in one work, showing acrylic alongside a traditional tempera binder rather than as a synonym for it; finely modeled figures retain the artist’s controlled finish.

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  Mickalene Thomas

  The National Museum of Women in the Arts records acrylic on wood panel in Thomas’s A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y (2009). She layers color beneath hand-placed rhinestones, using the painted field to build a dense portrait surface with attached embellishments.

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  Mohamed Melehi

  Qatar Museums identifies Melehi’s Composition (1968) as acrylic on linen canvas. Broad waves and repeated color bands turn the woven textile into a field for geometric rhythm, distinct from the glossy lacquered wood panels he made in the 1970s.

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  Morris Louis

  The Met records Alpha-Pi (1960) as Magna on canvas, a solvent-based acrylic-resin paint. Louis poured and thinned the medium so its colored streams could run across raw canvas; Magna is distinct from the waterborne acrylic emulsion used in most modern paint guides.

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  Njideka Akunyili Crosby

  The Met lists acrylic in Crosby’s Mother and Child (2016), alongside transfer printing, colored pencil, cut-and-pasted paper, and printed fabric on paper. Acrylic is one applied paint within a dense collage; the transfer and attached materials remain distinct surface components.

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  Norman Zammitt

  LACMA identifies acrylic on canvas in Zammitt’s Untitled (The Elusive Eureka) (1977–78), and MoMA records the medium in another Untitled (1984). Precisely graduated color bands create apparent depth across a flat support, distinct from his transparent-sheet constructions.

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  Richard Anuszkiewicz

  The Whitney catalogs The Fourth of the Three as acrylic on composition board, while the Met records Winter-Summer Reds as acrylic on canvas. Repeated bands and nested forms make adjacent colors seem to vibrate across both rigid and flexible supports.

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  Robert Irwin

  LACMA records Irwin’s acrylic-painted disc, where sprayed color and the shaped support create a hovering, perceptually unstable form. Acrylic paint is distinct from the acrylic lacquer finish documented on another work; both materials show his attention to surface and surrounding light.

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  Ronald Davis

  LACMA records Tall Yellow (1965) as acrylic with aluminum powder on canvas. The powder is an added material, while acrylic remains the paint binder; this work documents Davis’s use of acrylic before later geometric resin and fiberglass constructions.

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  Roy Lichtenstein

  MoMA records acrylic alongside oil in Lichtenstein’s Drowning Girl. The two binders form part of a mixed-media painting; later works such as Still Life with Crystal Bowl identify Magna separately rather than treating it as ordinary acrylic.

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  Sarah Cain

  The National Gallery of Art records acrylic among the materials in Cain’s Self Portrait, alongside other paint media, beads, and plastic thread. Cain brings painted marks into dialogue with attached materials and architecture, making acrylic one part of a constructed environment.

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  Sarah Crowner

  The Guggenheim records acrylic on canvas in Crowner’s Totem (2015), together with unpainted canvas and thread. Sewn segments of raw and painted canvas form geometric shapes, making the construction and support part of the composition.

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  Suzanne McClelland

  The Whitney records acrylic in someday (1992), on canvas with enamel and synthetic resin, and Going On, on paper with chalk, charcoal, and ink. These works show acrylic across different supports and in mixed-media compositions.

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  Tschabalala Self

  ICA Boston records Lite (2018) as acrylic, Flashe, milk paint, gum, and fabric on canvas. Acrylic is one painted component within Self’s stitched and layered composition; the collection record distinguishes the canvas support from materials assembled over it.

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  Victor Vasarely

  The French Ministry of Culture identifies Vega Pâl (1969) as acrylic on canvas, while Paris Musées records acrylic in Opus III (1970–74). Vasarely used systematic color and geometry to suggest depth, distinct from the oil in Vega-Nor.

Sources: Tate: A Bigger Splash, acrylic on white cotton-duck canvas; MoMA: Campbell’s Soup Cans, acrylic and metallic enamel on canvas; Helen Frankenthaler Foundation: Mauve District, acrylic on canvas; Whitney: Basquiat, Hollywood Africans; Whitney: Haring, Safe Sex, acrylic on canvas; Louisiana Art & Science Museum: Longshore, Cleopatra, acrylic on wood panel; Sophie Tea Art: In Full Bloom; Sotheby’s: Slawn, Bobo n Jarrad Go To Church; Kiptoe: Murals; Montclair Art Museum: Sarah Kraning live painting; LACMA: Bengston, Tom; Yale: Bridget Riley catalogue, Current; Mural Joe: paint and surface preparation guidance; MoMA: Corse, Untitled (First White Light Series); Corbett vs. Dempsey: Molly Zuckerman-Hartung works and materials; MoMA: Halley, Red Cell with Conduit; Frye Art Museum: Sandström, Ginnungagap; MoMA: Martin, Untitled #1, acrylic, gesso, and pencil; SFMOMA: Kiefer, Sulamith; National Gallery of Art: Newman, Be II; National Gallery of Art: Rothko, Untitled, 1969; The Met: Stella, Untitled (Kufa Gate Shape); Fundació Joan Miró: Woman; MoMA: Sillman, Split 2; Smithsonian: Flack, Queen, acrylic on canvas; MoMA: Samba, The Draughtsman, Chéri Samba; Pretty Distressed: Muscari’s acrylic furniture-paint project; MoMA: Close, Robert/104,072; Whitney: Kauffman, acrylic and ink on paper; MoMA: Twombly, Untitled (1970); LACMA: Siqueiros, Landscape in Red, acrylic on board; ABC ARTE: Davide D’Elia biography and practice; Hudson River Museum: Adams, Floater 59; The Met: al-Azzawi, Enkidu and the Harlot; The Turquoise Iris: Woods, Love Story, acrylic on stretched canvas; Carnegie Museum: Nelson, Bells, acrylic and mixed materials; LACMA: Moses, Abstract Painting (Red #1); LACMA: Ruscha’s acrylic airbrush methods; Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson: Lay-lah Lay-lah mural; Smithsonian: Amos, Winning, acrylic on linen; Angelus Direct: Enzo H. Kim sneaker-painting tutorial; Guggenheim: Ringgold, Tar Beach materials; MoMA: Johns, Untitled (2001 series); MoMA: Dubuffet, Parachiffre XLIV; Cleveland Museum of Art: Stanczak, Filtered Yellow; Southwest Contemporary: Bergt, Balance of Power; NMWA: Thomas, A-E-I-O-U and Sometimes Y; Qatar Museums: Melehi, Composition (1968); The Met: Louis, Alpha-Pi, Magna paint; The Met: Crosby, Mother and Child; LACMA: Zammitt, Untitled (The Elusive Eureka); Whitney: Anuszkiewicz, The Fourth of the Three; LACMA: Irwin acrylic-painted disc; LACMA: Davis, Tall Yellow, acrylic and aluminum powder on canvas; MoMA: Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl; National Gallery of Art: Cain, Self Portrait; Guggenheim: Crowner, Totem; Whitney: McClelland, Going On; ICA Boston: Self, Lite and new acquisitions; French Ministry of Culture: Vasarely, Vega Pâl.; Sarah Kraning: acrylic paintings on canvas